Yawn. We have no understanding of what consciousness actually is. Therefore attempting to prove whether a system can or cannot be conscious is something we can't prove or disprove at this point.

I'd go a step farther than that. Consciousness sits in the same social location as Nous or Chi did for ancient Greek and Chinese societies. We've dressed it up in scientific language but likewise other cultures used an authoritative register to talk about their bodily/mental mysteries.

My point is that this is a category problem. We have a name for a social ontological relation and we're desperately searching for physical evidence for it in order to justify its existence. Why? It's like searching for physical evidence of property ownership, physical evidence for the value of money, or physical evidence of friendship. These things exist in our minds. That's fine. The drive to reify is real, but we can choose not to do it.

I find papers like this strange for the same reason. Maybe I'm missing something...